


Man on the Moon

by lofi_charm



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Outer Space, Quote: Statement Begins (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26710090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lofi_charm/pseuds/lofi_charm
Summary: Statement of Eloise Edwards regarding a mishap while gaming in her apartment.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Man on the Moon

Statement of Eloise Edwards regarding a mishap while gaming in her apartment. Original statement given January 7th, 2018.

Statement begins.

I like to play video games. Common enough hobby for a 20 year-old like myself. It's pretty expensive though, so when I got a VR headset at Christmas I was beyond excited. I’d seen plenty of videos online of people accidentally punching a wall or falling over something with the headset on. Pretty hilarious. As soon as I tried it I fell in love with it. The immersion is incredible and just the feeling of being somewhere else… but that's not why I'm here is it? No, I'm here because something went wrong. Because of what happened last Friday. 

I had come home from an awfully long day and was looking to unwind. I ordered in and began to browse for a new game to play. I'm on a small game dev message board and have beta tested a lot of games. You know, the ones that aren't quite ready to be released. They need people like me to try and break them. Or at least that's how I think of it. Best way to find bugs is to be as obnoxious as possible. Anyway, I find one that seems interesting enough, something about being an astronaut and terraforming the Moon.

I downloaded the game, which took forever! Way longer than it should’ve. I made a mental note to ask the developer what's up with the file size. After nearly 20 minutes of downloading the game was finally ready. I grab the controller and my headphones and slid on my goggles. The game opens with the player inside the cockpit of a spaceship. There's a countdown and then the ship shutters as it’s launched into the air. There's a small window and you can see the ground getting smaller and smaller until you can see the whole planet shrinking below you. The graphics are simple enough but the effect is so breathtakingly beautiful. Soon enough the ship landed at its destination with a small thump. After a short tutorial sequence of the controls follows and I'm finally let out of the ship. 

It appears to be open-world which is ambitious. Lots of opportunity for error. I decide to not go straight to the space station right away. I'm curious to see how long it takes to circumvent the moon. I can't possibly be to-scale, and there's a moon rover I can use. Walking is slow and floaty, just like in the video of the moon landing. It’s charming at first but I could see it getting old quickly. The moon rover is also slow but faster than walking at least. You can get some air if you drive into a crater which is great fun. So much fun that I failed to notice the fuel gauge until it's too late. Interesting feature to make the player take fuel into account. I wondered if it played into the farming aspect of the game. 

I curse myself as I get out of the car and turn around. The moon base is nowhere in sight. I double check the horizon. The base is still not there. It's going to take forever to walk back. Thankfully the car actually left tracks for me to follow. Small blessings I guess. It's slow going but I can’t help but watch the Earth as I walk. It looms above me so terribly large yet so small and far away. My home. Everything I’ve ever known. Just a blink in the grand scheme of things.  
The worst part is you can't hear a thing. I half expected a soft crunch like if you were walking in fresh snow. Or at least some kind of music. I wonder if they're still working on the soundtrack, or if it's supposed to be this deadly quiet. Surrounded by the endless inky blackness. Made me realize that nobody can hear astronauts scream. The thought makes me shudder.

My unease is lifted once the station comes into view. I could almost weep, I was so glad to see it. It was still far away but at least I could see it now. I couldn’t wait to have a roof over my head, even if it was only pixels. The utter silence that I had come to expect was suddenly pierced by a shrill beeping. I bring my wrist to my face to check the monitor on my suit. The display warned me about a solar flare that was detected. Not a problem, I would be inside the space station by then. Or I would have been if I was looking where I was going. 

I can’t stop thinking that maybe if I had stuck to the main path this never would have happened. I had to go off into the unknown by myself without knowing a thing about this game. But you have to remember, that's why I was here. I’m a beta tester. I push the game to its limits, to its breaking point. I guess this was the one that finally pushed back

I fell into a crater. A big one. I went head over heels around and around. If I wasn't so shocked I might be oppressed at how realistic it was. I stopped tumbling only because I slammed headfirst into a rock. My suit started beeping in earnest as I watched a small crack appear on my helmet visor. My stomach dropped. How could this be happening? Was this some kind of test in the game? The alarms grew more desperate as the crack began to grow began to spiderweb further across my helmet. I couldn't think of what to do. The walls of the crater looked too steep to climb. I began to frantically press buttons on my monitor. I watched --helpless-- as the oxygen levels slowly decreased. I was beginning to feel light-headed. It didn't make any sense. I was in my studio apartment in London. Not on the moon with a leaking spacesuit. Then why was it so hard to think? Why was my mouth gaping open and closed like a fish gasping for air? Why did my chest feel like it was collapsing in on itself? And what was that ringing noise? It seems so far away. I scrambled to get a hold of something, anything, but I could feel the edges of my vision closing in around me. The last thing I saw was that black sky, smug and silent.

The next thing I know I’m awake. It’s 3 a.m. with my VR goggles still on and I’m laying on the floor in my living room. I was shaken up, totally freaked out. I panicked. I deleted the game from my computer. Full wipe. I never wanted to see or hear of that game again. I haven't used the goggles and haven’t been back to the message boards since. I don't know if you people deal with this kind of thing but it's been eating away at me all week. I haven't been to my apartment at all except to sleep; I spent most of my time outside. Trying to take advantage of the fresh air and the normal blue sky. 

Statement ends

Unfortunately we are unable to track down the supposed game developer online, Starseed01. Despite Ms. Edwards insisting that was the username, the moderators confirmed that it had never been registered on the message board website. She did give us her receipt for the pizza she had ordered that night however. Apparently they had called her when she was playing and had been forced to return to the pizzeria. We called the restaurant and managed to get a hold of the delivery driver who was working that night. He said he had called her several times but when she finally picked up her phone all he could hear was faint gasping. He was annoyed that his time had been wasted on a prank. However, it seemed Ms. Edwards was not in on the joke.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my first work on AO3! Comments and kudos are appreciated :)


End file.
